Disaster Recovery as a Service: Making Downtime Unnoticeable
On March 15, Joe Panettieri blogged about Machine-to-Machine Computing for automated BDR. Systems that detect failure and automatically hand off computing to a duplicate system in a safe zone are fantastic … and expensive and complicated. It’s also more than most businesses need. For most of them, a few minutes of downtime and a minimal amount of data loss is annoying but not a deal-breaker. It’s when those outages stretch to hours or days that real problems arise.
The good news is that the cloud has enabled solutions that can meet the objectives of most businesses quite well. While we haven’t realized wide-spread automated M2M solutions yet, multi-site replication can produce similar results with only a few clicks of a mouse. Not only are data files recoverable, but servers and desktops can be virtualized in minutes to resume normal business operations.
DRaaS
Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) is a growing field for many Channel service providers looking to offer cloud services. Multi-tenant converged infrastructures geared to SMBs, like Zenith Infotech’s TigerCloud solution, are quite affordable and provide comprehensive virtualization, backup and disaster recovery capabilities.
It is vital that MSPs understand their clients’ recovery needs and find ways to effectively meet their requirements affordably. Some factors to consider include:
- Recovery Time Objective: How much downtime is too much? 20 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours? A day? This will govern how quickly a virtual failover needs to roll up.
- Recovery Point Objective: How much data loss is acceptable? Is it a disaster to lose the last 10 minutes, or are we secure if we’re within 1 day? This determines the frequency of offsite replication, which will impact bandwidth needs.
- Recovery Service Level: Do all systems need to function at full speed? Does every server and desktop need to be brought up immediately? This impacts the level of processing capacity that must be in place at the replication site.
- Threat analysis: What is the threat level to the system? Is your area prone to natural disasters or environmental threats? Is equipment newer and functioning, or nearing its end of life? Are their regulatory requirements that impact data and file storage?
MSPs are directly involved in system recovery, but should also help clients develop a full recovery plan that considers work locations, physical files, telecommunications and other office equipment. You also need to engage in DR scenario testing to ensure your plans will work when needed. If clients aren’t up and running quickly with minimal data loss when the unexpected strikes, they will jump ship. So make sure you do it right!
Zenith Infotech specializes in delivering enterprise-class IT solutions for virtualization, storage, and backup & recovery for IT providers. Zenith’s TigerCloud multi-tenant converged infrastructure provides virtualization, storage and disaster recovery capability for SMBs. Take a 3-Day TigerCloud Business Continuity Test Drive or email partners@zenithinfotech.com to learn more.
